Tuesday, April 20, 2010

I've decided to post an audio short-story. It was read, written, directed, recorded, edited, created, imagined, nurtured, helped, fed, nourished, and bathed by me. The story only takes a few minutes. The transcript is provided below, if thou wishest to follow along.

Download here: (cause you know you wanna put it on and listen to it over and over and over and over and over and over again, like when you're running on a treadmill, or walking down an old gravel road, or taking a thirty-four hour car drive, or studying for a test...)

Disclaimer: I will not apologize for my accent. Be it known that I am from Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. It is here that English is spoken perfectly. Everyone else speaks with falsehoods and colloquialisms. We Muhlenberg Folk, especially those of us from Bremen, are the only true, American-English speakers.

Also, I will not apologize for getting carried away a bit in my reading.

Transcript:

The Testimony of Goodwin, P.A

This is my last day alive. The sickness is tearing through me, wearing my body thin and ruining my resolve. All I can think about is the humor in the situation. I come back to life and here I am, dying all over again. It’s a shame, truly. I was curious to see how long I could live again, but, no sense in crying over…

***

Oh the hunger! How am I supposed to put this out with the pain burning inside me? The Black Horse of the Apocalypse has unleashed ruin all across the globe, but the famine is not just with crop. The food of my kind is all but depleted, leaving behind a world full of moaning, angry, wretched devils.

***

To anyone that finds this, know that I am sorry for my actions, both whilst I lived and whilst I re-lived. I squandered my second chance, unable to resist the urges of my new body. I mobbed with the rest of them, biting and gnashing without abandon. I never even considered the victims of my selfishness until, until, quite a bit later, after the supply ran out and I was left with only my clan. (Is that what we are? A clan?)

Of course we tried eating ourselves, but no society functions within the realms of civility by practicing cannibalism. Yes, we are a civil lot, save for when we catch a scent of succulent, juicy… Ha haha ha. Haaaaaaaa…

***

I leave this to anyone that may find it. Know that none of us, at least not any of the ones I knew, wanted things to end like this. We didn’t realize at the time that we were any different, we were just hungry. In the long hours between meals, we would talk to kill the time. It’s… it’s crazy how similar all of our feelings were. It’s almost like we all shared one mind, but over many different bodies. And we all had the same intent: feed.

It shames me…

***

I pray that there are survivors out there and that we don’t find you. You can outlast us. We can only go a handful of days before we… stop. Again, I can’t describe this, but… My running mate, Zekial, gave out yesterday. His body just stopped. One minute we’re talking, trying to find sustenance, knowing that we’re both doomed if we don’t, just not knowing when. And then his legs gave out; he couldn’t move. And then he just stopped talking. Mid-sentence. He gasped and his body froze in Death’s tight grip. He’d been six days without a meal. It was his first time dying.

I’m not sure how I came back. I remember dying, certainly. I got hit by a truck. I was working. Walking down the road and then BOOM! That was it. I died instantly. Then there was just black and music. But then, some time later, the darkness burned orange and I came to. I was in a mausoleum, surrounded by monsters. That was my first impression, and I suppose it still is the same. And I was hungry.

I had my first meal that very night. Zekial took pity on me and invited me on a hunting party. We found a family of six, ha, and they had a pet dog, too! I remember throwing up afterwards. My stomach was bloated. But the brains… Oh.

***

Not long now. I’m too weak to move. The rest of the clan will be dying before long. We’ve all been days without food, and it looks like there’s nothing left. I pray to God that I am wrong, that someone out there lives. This cannot be how humanity ends. It’s… It’s too…

If you lived just a bit closer, sir, I think we could have some very entertaining discussions.

Great work.

I am truly inspired by the flash fiction idea, both as an art and as a way to practice and hone the craft.

I told a buddy at work about your blog, and he read The Robot Sighed and really liked it. I told him to check out the Epic poem about Oscambria (one day I will tackle this) because that kind of thing is right up his alley.

Hey, cool idea to record what you've written. Takes a strange, cool sort of bravery to post it up for us all to hear. Turned out well. I'm half-tempted to record a version of it myself, and send it to you for your amusement... I am a trained actor, you know! :P

Hey, maybe we could collaborate on some sort of multimedia thing, with animation, voice, music in the background, something about this length... might be fun...